Reviews & Analysis

Black phosphorous, a van der Waals layered semiconductor, is reported to reveal a plasmonic response that can be initiated by photoexcitation with femtosecond pulses.

This Perspective discusses the possibilities for using structural nanocomposites to enhance the mechanical properties of materials for automotive applications.

This Perspective establishes catalyst activity targets for hydroxide exchange membrane fuel cells and discusses advantages and research needs of this technology.

This Perspective discusses an approach to artificial photosynthesis based on arrays of semiconducting microwires and flexible polymeric membranes, and highlights the scientific and engineering challenges involved in delivering an artificial photosynthetic system that is simultaneously safe, robust, efficient and scalable.

This Review discusses how nanostructured materials are used to enhance the performances and safety requirements of Li batteries for hybrid and long-range electric vehicles.

The programmable disorder often seen in biological networks has now been demonstrated with DNA origami tiles using a stochastic algorithm.

A microfluidic chip with progressively stronger magnetic field gradients along its length can sort and classify circulating tumour cells based on the expression of cell surface markers.

Tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy can be used to characterize the relationship between the topography and the chemical activity of individual surface sites.

The creation and destruction of magnetic whirls by the application of an electric field may be the basis for novel memory technologies.

This Review discusses the technical challenges and performance metrics to integrate micro-supercapacitors into miniaturized electronic devices.

Nanostructured photocatalytic microrods can swim either towards or away from a light source depending on their surface functionalization.

A general method for particle assembly allows access to a diverse range of modular microscale supraparticles from nanoparticles, nanowires and even cells.

Small dipeptide fragments enzymatically combine and split to form sequences that self-assemble into nanomaterials.

Two reports show FDA-approved nanoparticles can kill cancer cells through iron- and reactive oxygen species-dependent mechanisms, offering new strategies for cancer treatment.

Under shear stress, silicon nanocrystals become amorphous through an intermediate hexagonal crystalline phase.

Optical microscopy goes subnanometre with DNA-PAINT.

Semiconductor nanocrystals offer an enormous diversity of device applications that have been potentially limited by intermittent fluorescence intensity or 'blinking' dynamics. However, recent progress in both experiment and theory suggest a more promising outlook.

Isoelectric points of small samples of proteins can now be measured using atomic force microscopy and substrates with a known charge.

Photogenerated charge carriers from hundreds of self-assembled nanowires are harnessed to make a functional photovoltaic device.